Sesame Street has been a pioneer of diversity in children’s television, unafraid to incorporate characters of various ethnicities, languages, and physical abilities. They had a multi-episode storyline with an adoptive single mother in 2006. Why then, have they still shown no clearly LGBTQ characters (rumors about Bert and Ernie notwithstanding)?

Did 2014 bring LGBTQ parents and our children closer to equality? Most visibly, it was the year that marriage equality spread to most of the U.S.—a great thing for many families, but certainly not all that happened.

The lyric, “I belong to a family. It may not look like your family,” epitomizes the joyous new children’s album Dancin’ in the Kitchen, by two-time Grammy Award-winning duo Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. Families with same-sex parents are only one of the many types of families celebrated in this warm and funny collection.

Judy Gold has been a stand-up comedian for 20 years and won two Emmys for writing and producing The Rosie O’Donnell Show. She’s also a “Jewish lesbian mother of two,” and spoke recently with Forbes about where she gets her sense of humor, how she got started in standup, her one-woman shows, and what she thinks about labels.

What do you get when you take two moms and five kids of assorted race and ethnicity, place in a home, sprinkle the neighborhood with other parental figures, and stir well? The answer is ABC Family’s The Fosters, which finished its second season in August. It remains not just a show about a lesbian-headed family, but one of the most thoughtful family shows on television. Here are some of the things I liked best about this season.

Last January, I wrote about the pilot for Transparent, a half-hour drama that centers around a transgender parent who is just beginning to transition. Amazon Studios had promised to use viewer feedback to determine whether to produce the full series — and I’m happy to say the results were favorable. Watch the trailer after the jump.

Like many writers, I love word games, and am eager to get a copy of the just-published fifth edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, which includes more than 5000 new words. One of the new entries is the Yiddish word “schmutz” — and for those of you unclear on its meaning (hint: it’s not the same as schmuck), Judy Gold, a “comedian, actress, writer, and Jewish mother” (also a lesbian mom) is here to help you out.

The Fosters, ABC Family’s lesbian mom drama, airs its second season finale tonight. I hope you’ll join me (and many others) tonight at 9 p.m. ET to watch the show and tweet along using #TheFosters and #gaydybunch. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan — how are the rest of you enjoying it? Any wishes or predictions for the finale and/or Season Three? (After the jump, catch a sneak peek of the Adams Fosters sitting down for family dinner in tonight’s episode.)

While visiting the San Francisco Bay Area this past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful screening of four short films about Black queer motherhood. The even was hosted by Sistah Sinema, a multi-city network for Queer Women of Color cinema. Learn more and watch one of the films (from 1983!) after the jump.

The Fosters, ABC Family’s two-mom, many kid drama, begins its second season tonight, and I can hardly wait. Here are some of the thoughts I had on the first season and what it means for us real LGBTQ families — as well as a sneak peek of tonight’s scene in which Jude gets his birth certificate.

A short new children’s video gives us the story of a seven-year-old girl who tells her friend a fairy tale about how her two dads met. There’s much to love about this creative video blending live and stop action — not least that it adds to the very small number of children’s videos featuring LGBTQ families. One aspect of it, however, gives me pause. Have a look and leave a comment about what you think.

I felt old today as I realized that Ellen, Ms. DeGeneres’ first television show, premiered in 1994 — 20 years ago. Of course, most of us remember best the 1997 episode in which she came out as a lesbian. Writer Emma Tattenbaum-Fine recently recalled watching the show with her two moms. “The night Ellen came out, I felt my family got an invitation to the party,” she says in the video after the jump.

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Mombian is a lifestyle site for lesbian moms and other LGBT parents, offering a mix of parenting, politics, diversions, and resources.
I founded Mombian in 2005 after noting a lack of sites with current, practical news and information for LGBT parents, or sites that looked at other aspects of LGBT culture with a parent’s eye. I hope all lesbian moms (and even some non-lesbian parents) will find something interesting and perhaps worthy of conversation.
I also created and host the annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day event, which began in 2006.
For more, see the About page.

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